Things are Best in the Morning
by dattebayo1213
Summary: In which we learn that Naruto's insomnia has corrupted another generation, and a small boy and his grandfather realize exactly how much they mean to each other.


Story: Things Are Best in the Morning

Premise: Naruto's insomniac genes have corrupted another generation—and two people learn what they mean to each other.

Words: 1,042

Shiro rubbed his amber eyes, sitting up in the little bed he had been calling his own for only a few short weeks. Since the baby had come, everything had been uprooted. He couldn't sleep even if everything stayed constant, how could they expect him to sleep with everything changing? Shiro needed his mother to sleep. He needed her comforting embrace, the feel of her hand running through his hair to help him calm down, he needed to know that those eyes were watching him, and only him… well, maybe his Dad too.

He carefully pulled the covers off enough to allow him to get out of the bed and soundlessly jumped to the floor, grabbing the sketchbook his father had gotten him and his bag of pencils. Drawing was how Shiro combated the horror known as life. His father had his music, his mother had her violence, and he drew. He drew pictures of everything—landscapes, people, animals—and drew so many that he had been likened to his grandmother, before she had given up her drawing in the pursuit of making her best friend happy.

He plopped down on the wooden deck, spreading his materials out on the flat surface as he looked out on his grandfather's vegetable garden, the small fenced-off partition that held his great and great-great grandparent's bodies, and the flowers that his grandmother had planted, in order to liven up the somber mood of the house. He smiled as he began to sketch an outline of a face, a man's face—strong features, eyes that seemed to laugh and see straight into your soul at the same time, hair that hung into his eyes, and a contented smile. Shiro grabbed his pencils and used the colors to add a new depth to his drawing, coloring the hair as a strange mixture of yellows and golds, as it was, the eyes a curious mixture of blues, and the whisker marks on his cheeks slightly faded. What he didn't expect is that the man he was drawing would appear next to him.

"Ne… up early, little one?" He asked, ruffling the boy's black hair as he eased himself down beside him. "Shiro couldn't sleep, Jiji." Shiro said, smiling contentedly as the older man frowned. "I thought I told you not to call me that." "Aww, Jiji, it's CUTE!" He protested, resembling his mother greatly as his puppy eyes drove his point straight into the older man's heart. "All right. You go ahead." He said and chuckled as the little boy hugged him around the neck and ran straight back to his picture, appearing to put his finishing touches on it, when something occurred to him.

"Ne… Shiro?" The older man asked, scrutinizing the drawing. "Can I see that for a second?" Shiro handed it over gladly, nodding as he did, and his grandfather looked carefully, brow furrowing as he recognized it as himself. He picked up a pencil, and sketched the outline of another figure, this one much smaller than the other, with a rounded face, indicating someone beyond infancy, but not too far away from its simplicity. He sketched black bangs that stopped just above the eyes, which shone a brilliant mixture of gold and brown, and a smile that made you think of bunnies and rainbows just by its sheer cuteness. As an afterthought, he added the panda that Shiro took everywhere, that he had, quite cleverly, named "Panda-chan". "There. Perfect, ne?"

Shiro looked at the picture again, eventually recognizing himself, and the careful way his grandfather had drawn him, indicating that **he** was the one making him laugh, and that **he** was the one responsible for the carefree smile that graced his face so often nowadays. "Jiji? How come **Shiro's** the one making you laugh?" He asked, cocking his head to the side much like Naruto had done repeatedly in his younger days.

"Because Shiro-kun makes everyone's life." Naruto said, laughing as an expression of confusion found its place on Shiro's face. "Ne… you make everyone very happy. Especially your parents." Shiro's eyes lighted up at the mention of him being good enough for his parents, and Naruto saw a shadow of the boy who would do anything to please his father, the boy who worked hard at everything so that it would be good enough, the boy who loved everyone like his own family, the boy this child would one day become. And Naruto sincerely hoped he would be there to see him.

Naruto stood, stretching as the sun rose, lighting every corner of the garden, the small cemetery, and the flower boxes as its light turned the sky shades of red, purple and orange. "Shiro? Want breakfast?" He asked, offering a hand to the little boy, who took it eagerly and pulled himself up, drawing materials lying, forgotten at the moment, on the floor as Shiro paused one second and wrote their names at the bottom of the paper in his shaky kanji, adding the date mere seconds after. "Now the whole world knows that we did this **together**, Jiji!" He said, smiling infectiously as he put it down, following the older man to the kitchen as he mused about what exactly they could make for breakfast without using fire, gasoline or anything else his grandfather could use to destroy the kitchen.

Years upon years later, when the old man was gone, and the little boy had grown into something more, something bigger, he'd look at this drawing and hear his own words echo throughout his mind. "Now the whole world knows we did this **together**, Jiji!" He'd hear, scoffing at his formerly girlish voice. But the more important part, the one that the boy treasured most, was that he knew, from somewhere over the rainbow, that the man was watching him, and laughing at every drawing he drew, and that someday… some distant morning, the two of them would draw together again, and they could make new memories that would last forever.

A/N: Had to write something about Naruto and Shiro, and their… special relationship.


End file.
